Two assignment

（Week2）

Reading#1

Last week we looked at how Automatons developed in the cultural imagination of the Western world as a way to save labor. This process resulted in a level of alienation of people from the products of their work and was an integral ingredient in the development of capitalism. 

This week we're going to be looking at two works that think about the question of automation as an internal feature of our own consciousness. Tversky and Kahneman argue that your brain forms heuristics, labor saving shortcuts, in order to make the process of judgment easier. Unfortunately, these heuristics are often mistaken in how they evaluate things like probability.

https://www-jstor-org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/stable/pdf/1738360.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A11cb3d078c5bac90d9fc976f2dee360d

Reading#2

In Influence, Robert Cialdini demonstrates that these kind of heuristics (he doesn't use the term, but that is what he is describing) effect choices that we make as consumers and inform the strategies that advertisers and experience architects (people who design things like stores and casinos with the goal of getting you to spend more money) use to get you to do what they want.

The entire first chapter is available on Amazon using the "look inside" function. The other chapters are also interesting if you want to read more, and several more of them are available as samples.